Born: 30 July 1907, South Africa
Died: 10 October 2001
Country most active: South Africa
Also known as: Anna Amelia Mauve
South African botanist Anna Amelia Obermeyer Mauve catalogued more than 4,000 plant specimens from the Kalahari and Soutpansberg regions. She made major contributions to botany journals Flowering Plants of Africa and Bothalia.
Obermeyer earned her BSc in 1928 and MSc in 1931 from the Transvaal University College in Pretoria and was appointed botanist in the Transvaal Museum from 1929 to 1938. She worked mainly on Acanthaceae, particularly Barleria, Blepharis and Petalidium. She catalogued a large collection of plants from the Vernay-Lang expedition to the Kalahari, creating one of the first records of the region’s plant life. She was also part of an expedition to the Soutpansberg Salt Pan and wrote an account of the plant specimens collected.
She left the profession when she married Anton Mauve in 1938, returning in 1957 when she joined the National Herbarium, essentially returning to her original job as the museum’s botanical collections had moved to the National Herbarium in 1953. There, she was responsible for petaloid monocots, describing new species and writing texts to accompany images published in the journal Flowering Plants of Africa. Volume 42 of the journal was dedicated to her. She also completed revisions of Anthericum, Dipcadi and Lagarosiphon. She collected more than 4,000 specimens on various field trips in South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). She worked at the National Herbarium for more than 30 years and in 1984 she was promoted to Temporary senior agricultural researcher, retiring in August 1985.
Over the course of her career, Obermeyer was a member of the South African Biological Society and edited the journal of the South African Biological Society. She was a founding member of the South African Association of Botanists, a member of Association pour l’Étude Taxonomique de la Flore d’Afrique Tropicale (AETFAT) and a member of S2A3 (the South African Association for the Advancement of Science). She was awarded the South African Association of Botanists (SAAB) senior medal for botany.